how will it work? It promises to be effective against variants

It is these hours the news of the flop of vaccine German CureVac produced in Tübingen. In Italy 30 million doses of this messenger mRNA vaccine were expected Pfizer e Modern, but clinical tests have shown efficacy against the Covid-19 equal to 47%: too low for the quality standard set by the WHO which sets the minimum level at 70%. In addition, this drug does not “cover” the elderly population. Thus the spotlight shifts to Covid-eVax, the Italian vaccine produced by Takis and Rottapharm Biotech companies.

Well, the news regarding Covid-eVax is encouraging. The Italian vaccine protects against contagion from the virus and works against variants. The data obtained in preclinical models, that is on mice modified so as to have the same human Ace receptor used by the virus to invade cells, and on the basis of which the phase 1 and 2 clinical trial has been started . The data, presented to an important international journal, are online on the BioRxiv website, which includes works not yet subjected to scrutiny by the scientific community.

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Italian vaccine

Covid-eVax is different from those approved so far in Europe and the United States because it uses DNA technology combined with the electroporation technique, which allows the passage of DNA into cells using short electrical stimuli, developed thanks to the collaboration with another Italian company, the ‘Igea di Carpi (Modena).

The study is the result of an international collaboration involving the Spallanzani Institute, the Regina Elena Institute, Ingm and the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, the German University of Ulm and the Israeli University of Tel Aviv, the National Infection Service of the British Public Health England. Based on the results obtained in the study, phase 1 and 2 clinical trials began in Italy in March at the San Gerardo Hospital in Monza with the University of Milan Bicocca, the National Cancer Institute IRCCS Pascale in Naples, the Spallanzani Institute and the Clinical Research Center. of Verona, in collaboration with the VisMederi laboratories in Siena. “The data obtained in the hACE2 mouse model, which has the same receptor as man and develops a similar pathology, show protection from the virus and the absence of respiratory symptoms and clinical effects due to SarsCov2 infection”, notes Matteo Iannacone , of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and lecturer at the Vita-Salute University. “Never as in this historical moment have we understood how important scientific research is to fight the pandemic and other diseases. In Italy we have excellent scientists with excellent ideas and skills that need to be appropriately financed to make the country more competitive ”, adds Iannacone. “Thanks to competitive European funding, the results obtained in mice have been confirmed in the ferret, a model widely used for respiratory viruses and predictive of vaccine efficacy,” says Fabio Palombo, director of Takis’ Cancer Vaccines Area. .

The vaccine, the two companies note in a note, offers the advantage of being “cheap, does not need complex formulations, can be produced on a large scale and does not need a cold chain”. A similar technology is also being tested in the veterinary field, adds Antonella Conforti, director of Evvivax, the veterinary spinoff of Takis: “SarsCoV2 is in fact able to infect various animal species – he adds – and it is important to prevent the onset of new variants with vaccination, where possible “.

The first clinical data on the safety and immunogenicity of Covid-eVax are expected at the end of August. “The clinical study is underway and we expect the first results on the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine by the end of August”, says the president and scientific director of Rottapharm Biotech, Lucio Rovati. “In the current scenario – he continues – Covid-eVax could represent an excellent tool in countries where there is currently no availability of vaccines or as a reminder of the immune response over time induced by other vaccination platforms”. For Luigi Aurisicchio, administrator and scientific director of Takis, «the Covid-eVax platform, which we have called X-eVax, where X stands for antigen X, can be used for many other diseases, including cancer. By investing in this technological sector, in the future we will be able to generate new vaccines more quickly, but also innovative gene therapies in oncology and other therapeutic sectors ».